< The 2016 Tech 50

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5
Shawn Edwards & Vlad Kliatchko
Chief Technology Officer & Global Head of Engineering
Bloomberg
Last year: 6

Have a question? Ask the Bloomberg terminal. As a result of several years of research and engineering, 325,000 Bloomberg Professional subscribers can type questions into the search bar and get results that are more in-depth and tailored to their needs than those from a conventional keyword search. The underlying technologies — natural-language processing and machine learning — are “one of our biggest areas of investment,” says Bloomberg chief technology officer Shawn Edwards. While machine learning — systems that iteratively learn from experience and can extract predictive insights from large data sets — is piquing interest in many areas of financial services, “we are actually delivering,” Edwards says. “Machine learning is only as good as the training sets,” and what distinguishes Bloomberg is the “data, domain expertise and technology” it brings to bear. Edwards leads a team of 30 charged with “identifying and prototyping leading-edge technologies to solve our most strategic challenges.” More than 100 technologists are dedicated to machine learning, which is also embedded in such Bloomberg offerings as a liquidity-risk assessment tool and sentiment analysis of news and social media. They are a fraction of the 4,800-plus engineers working on infrastructure, software and web development under global head of engineering Vlad Kliatchko, who like Edwards is 47 and has been with New York–based Bloomberg for 13 years. Kliatchko’s organization is dispersed among 26 offices in 11 countries and has grown by nearly 1,000 in the past year. Look no further than Bloomberg to get a handle on the financial data explosion: On a given day the network processes 100 billion market data messages, or ticks. “Every year we have to be ready for the volumes to jump by 100 percent,” Kliatchko says. Just adding hardware isn’t the solution; the existing infrastructure has to be made “more scalable and efficient.” Although competitive strategy is kept close to the vest, Edwards’s and Kliatchko’s units are increasingly transparent, having recently launched the Tech at Bloomberg website. They are active in open-source projects and even preparing to publish Bloomberg’s database software, which could stimulate innovation in addressing performance and latency challenges. The CTO and head of engineering report to the executive committee: founder Michael Bloomberg, chairman Peter Grauer and longtime products and services head Thomas Secunda (No. 1 on the Tech 50 from 2012 through 2014). Since Bloomberg returned to his eponymous firm in 2014 after three terms as New York mayor, the tone has been “don’t be too conservative,” Kliatchko says. “We are risk takers. We should be investing in trying things out.”

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The 2016 Tech 50

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1. Catherine
Bessant
Bank of America Corp.

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2. Jeffrey Sprecher
Intercontinental Exchange

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3. Lance Uggla
Markit

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4. Phupinder Gill
CME Group

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5. Shawn Edwards and Vlad Kliatchko
Bloomberg

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6. R. Martin Chavez
Goldman Sachs Group

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7. Robert Goldstein
BlackRock

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8. Adena Friedman
Nasdaq

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9. Deborah Hopkins
Citi Ventures

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10. Daniel Coleman
KCG Holdings

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11. Stephen Neff
Fidelity Investments

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12. David Craig
Thomson Reuters

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13. Michael Spencer
ICAP

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14. Michael Bodson
Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.

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15. Charles Li
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing

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16. Chris Concannon
BATS Global Markets

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17. Blythe Masters
Digital Asset Holdings

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18. David Rutter
R3CEV

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19. Neil Katz
D.E. Shaw & Co.

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20. Lee Olesky
Tradeweb Markets

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21. Richard McVey
MarketAxess Holdings

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22. Seth Merrin
Liquidnet Holdings

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23. Robert Alexander
Capital One Financial Corp.

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24. Brad Katsuyama
IEX Group

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25. Antoine Shagoury
State Street Corp.

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26. David Gledhill
DBS Bank

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27. Lou Eccleston
TMX Group

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28. Andreas Preuss
Deutsche BÖrse

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29. Dan Schulman
PayPal Holdings

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30. Scott Dillon
Wells Fargo & Co.

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31. Mike Chinn
S&P Global Market Intelligence

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32. Craig Donohue
Options Clearing Corp.

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33. Gary Norcross
Fidelity National Information Services

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34. Steven O'Hanlon
Numerix

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35. Sebastián Ceria
Axioma

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36. Michael Cooper
BT Radianz

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37. Tyler Kim
MaplesFS

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38. Neal Pawar
AQR Capital Management

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39. David Harding
Winton Capital Management

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40. Chris Corrado
London Stock Exchange Group

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41. Brian Conlon
First Derivatives

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42. Jim Minnick
eVestment

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43. Stephane Dubois
Xignite

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44. Mazy Dar
OpenFin

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45. Yasuki Okai
NRI Holdings America

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46. Kim Fournais
Saxo Bank

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47. Jock Percy
Perseus

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48. Robert Schifellite
Broadridge Financial Solutions

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49. Brian Sentance
Xenomorph Software

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50. Pieter van der Does
Adyen